Open The Window, Sarah
by Atlanta B. Lloyd
Summary: The music plays again for her, one night after her divorce when her soul feels like a broken mirror flying into a thousand shards.


The music plays again for her, one night after her divorce when her soul feels like a broken mirror flying into a thousand shards.

She's in her bathroom, rifling through the vanity, trying to decide what's worth bringing and what she'll have to leave. Except her fingers are shaking so badly that she drops a handful of lipstick tubes as she tries to transfer them into her purse. As they scatter across the floor, Sarah takes one quick step back, bumps against the wall of her bathroom, and then lets herself slide down it to the floor.

She's too shattered for tears, too broken up to catch her breath long enough to give a true, heaving sob the way she'd like to. Instead, ever the escapist, she lets her mind travel backwards, back before her wedding, before she'd met Theo, before she'd even graduated from high school. It's ironic, and if she had the energy she'd laugh, because she hadn't thought that her childhood was a very happy one while she was living it. Now, she finds herself looking back wistfully every time being a grown-up proves to be more one long heartbreak than anything else.

Sarah remembers getting her face painted at a fair with her mother. She remembers playing the lead in her sixth-grade play. And she remembers the Labyrinth. Her thirteen-hour coming of age, where other teenagers had prom or graduation. But she remembers it most for something that she wouldn't admit, not even to herself, for many years afterward. She remembers it because it had been such a close call, in more ways than one. She remembers it because if it had been just a few months earlier, if she'd been just a little younger, she would have stayed. A magic world; a powerful goblin king. They'd been a part of her childish fantasies for so long.

And that's why Sarah considers her coming of age. Because being thrown into a world straight out of her wildest dreams and then forced to give it up, to push it away with both hands and all of her heart, was a cruel joke worthy only of adulthood. Now, she wishes that there had been another way. A way to save Toby and lose herself. If the Labyrinth had been a dream, a fantasy, then it had been a beautiful one, which is more than can be said of her life now.

Sarah can see the reflection of her face in her full-length mirror, and she looks worn out, too old for twenty-seven. Her lips are turned down at the corners with anxiety, and her eyes are narrowed against some pain, dark and glittering against a face that is too pale and too thin.

_There's such a sad love, deep in your eyes, a kind of pale jewel..._

At first, Sarah thinks that she's so lost in her memories that she's imagining the song. She doesn't even allow herself to analyze the voice that's crooning it. It's all in her mind; it's safe because it's all just a distant memory. She closes her eyes, lets herself drown in it, and slowly, her breathing begins to even and lose that jagged gasping. Her chest stops heaving and for the first time in weeks, months really, her thoughts aren't tormenting her. In fact, as the song pulls her in farther and farther, her mind is absolutely silent.

_I'll place the sky, within your eyes..._

Absolutely silent... It's that realization that makes her open her eyes and cock her head. Because now that she isn't trapped by the voices of her own miserable thoughts, she can hear that the music most definitely isn't playing _inside_ of her head. Her lips part in a slow sigh as her gaze trails from the bathroom door, across her vanity, past her mirror to the window. It's nighttime, but there's enough moonlight for her to make out the shapes of clouds against the darker sky. She stays there on the floor, perfectly still, just watching. After a minute, her eyes shift, and she focuses on something, some form against the sky, gliding through the scattered clouds softly but surely, towards her. Slowly, she stands and, without looking away from the window, reaches up and turns out the bathroom light to bring the sky outside into better focus. Her white blouse and skirt are luminous in the moonlight as she steps over the scattered lipstick tubes in shoeless, stockinged feet.

_There's such a fooled heart, beating so fast in search of new dreams..._

If there are matters to attend to, details to be taken into consideration, Sarah dismisses them. The years have alleviated the doubts that she once had. Before, she'd been fighting for Toby. She'd been fighting for her future, for the grown-up life that she'd wanted then. Well, Toby doesn't hang in the balance this time, and the rest of it is laughable now.

She passes the mirror without a glance at it and steps carefully up onto the rim of her white porcelain bathtub. Her hair falls over her shoulder as she reaches for her window with both hands, feeling for the latch to unlock it. At that moment the clouds outside shift, and moonlight floods her face, which is furrowed in concentration, but not anxiety. The worries have fallen away, replaced with calm single-mindedness. The last twelve years have just been growing up that she's needed to do, and all that matters is right now.

_I'll place the moon... within your heart..._

She bites down on her lip as she finds the latch, and she unlocks the window soundlessly. She doesn't hesitate before she pushes up the sill, inch by inch. The first breeze touches her face like warm, soft breath, and then Sarah has pushed the window up as far as it will go. She waits, her lips parted, but not for long. And as clouds once again cover the moon, hiding the sight of Sarah's bathroom window from the eyes of any curious neighbors, all Sarah can see are wings, outstretched like a lover's arms and shining like the full moon.

_I'll be there for you, as the world falls down..._

The one promise made in her childhood that has been kept.

_**Author's Note:**_ Thanks for reading my first fanfiction! If possible, leave a review letting me know what you thought of it! Also, if you noticed any errors, please let me know so that I can fix them.

Atlanta B. Lloyd


End file.
